Word: fetus
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...prohibiting state employees from performing abortions was upheld on the ground that it "leaves a pregnant woman with the same choices as if the State had chosen not to operate any public hospitals at all." Another provision, requiring physicians to perform tests to determine whether a 20-week-old fetus could survive outside the womb, was also upheld, in part on the ground that such testing "permissibly furthers the State's interest in protecting potential human life...
Democracy usually requires that its battles be fought in the legislatures. But in the 16 years since Roe was decided, the nation has avoided a full-scale political brawl between those at one extreme who feel that a fetus is a mass of dependent protoplasm to be extracted without regret and those at the other pole who believe that an embryo deserves protection from the moment of conception. With Roe in place, politicians could pay rhetorical homage to the pro-life movement without having to act on their professed dislike of abortion. Pro-choice groups, confident that the Roe ruling...
...exist and the legislatures are larded with sympathetic officials. Pro- lifers will attempt to go well beyond the provisions in the Missouri statute. In some states bills may be introduced that would make a woman seeking an abortion listen to the fetal heartbeat and look at pictures of a fetus at the same level of development as hers...
That approach, however, has raised the ire of many legal experts and women's rights groups. "These cases are attacks on women," says Lynn Paltrow of the A.C.L.U.'s Reproductive Freedom Project. "If states pass laws that make maternal behavior a crime against the fetus, and if the state can create prenatal police patrols for cocaine use, then where would they draw the line?" Opponents note that alcohol use, smoking and other kinds of maternal conduct have also been shown to damage fetuses. Says Paltrow: "For some women, standing on their feet all day is harmful. Will they arrest them...
...additional concern among foes of legal intervention. They fear that the real goal in these cases may be an unspoken one: an end run around the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade. That 1973 decision found that the rights of the mother, rather than the fetus, are primary. Says Leslie Harris of the A.C.L.U.: "Those who want to rush in and criminalize the behavior of women are pushing a different agenda than prenatal care. If they can persuade the courts that a woman who chooses to carry a child to term has obvious legal obligations...